and let's screw it up, double crew them, realize the mess, pay M7 and effectively paying 4 times for the trip. Yep, it's all pilots fault!!

When double pay was a rarity pilots jumped at the chance. Now it's so common that we can pick and choose. Make premium rare again and the self licking ice cream cone melts away. Here's the secret sauce. Build better trips, properly staff pilots, hire, train and retain CS. For the VP who reads AND implements this suggestion you can send your MIP to St Judes Children's Hospital, as is the norm for APC financial settlements. You can address the Thank You card for keeping your job to Gunfighter, c/o AUS CPO

And here's some wild numbers:

Jan 2025 Pilots in Category: 15,735 Total: 17,284
Apr 2026 Pilots in Category: 15,678 Total: 17,608

We STILL have less pilots flying the line now than we did 15 months ago. To reiterate: Even at a robust hiring pace, we are still 57 pilots short of January 2025.

Reasons for higher total:
+148 new hires
+3 Supervisors
+119 Instructors
+30 Long terms sick
+84 Military Leave
+5 Personal LEave

I respectfully disagree. Through my reps via the negotiators, I have stepped up to offer some quick fixes to the problem they created through their incompetent handling of their crew resources. I am willing to sacrifice all sorts of contractual improvement needs that I am willing to shelve for a couple of years. I’m ready to fly my arse off this summer to clean up the mess they’ve made of Richard Anderson’s Delta Air Lines. Let’s get a mutually agreeable deal out for memrat and get back to the business of printing money.

Auto Accept wasn’t a problem until they understaffed the airline. We used it for years. However it became a problem when:

-the company didn’t hire enough pilots
-ran the op hotter than ever
-eliminated credit in almost every NB trip
-decided it necessary to call 500+ pilots per batch at 2am
-eliminated PB days as we knew them
-preposted rest for reserve pilots
-assigned the maximum # of SCs to every Res pilot
-increased the hostile attitude towards pilots in comms

Should this really be a shock?

That’s not even considering that a pilot has to check 3 different cumbersome websites to ensure they are paid correctly. And when they aren’t (which is often), it can take weeks for the company to fix it. How that’s even possible in 2026 is seriously baffling to me.

but that goes against the grain of productivity and efficiency improvements described as accomplishments on management resumes and taught at jack welch university and the likes of bain consulting, boston consulting group and mckinsey consulting companies.

Lol, this is sarcasm, right?

The Delta subreddit has 1.2mm weekly visitors....that's 171,500 people PER DAY that find their way to that destination specifically to read and discuss about Delta. There are several articles on this very topic linked from that sub in the last 24 hours. Quite literally, millions of people are 'talking' about it. You know, in the 21st century sense.

Edit to add: You'd probably be surprised at the level of detail the discussion is getting to. People pay closer attention that we realize and a lot of them understand the situation with a surprising level of interest.

Lots of headlines about not enough pilots or whatever the story is. I'd really love to see a headline about Delta's shorting of pilot pay and the thousands of unresolved pay issues that stay in cue for months. Very curious what the general public would think about that.

-pilots let greed overcome scruples (and bragged about it) causing proliferation


just adding a point to your list